Human Resource Knowledge

Managers must become senior colleagues

An important reason why employees don’t feel free to walk up to their seniors and bring critical issues to their notice is because they are afraid of the consequences. The first and foremost task of managers is to facilitate people to work effectively in an interesting environment and remove all obstacles that might come their way. To do this well, managers have to listen to people. Facilitating an open door policy is part of a good manager’s job

Senior colleagues must follow an open-door policy in which any associate can approach the CEO and senior management with work-related problem. It may sound good but in reality there are very few who top level people like CEO and V.P who actually accept this HR suggestion. This leads to frustration among employees who feel cheated as they’ve actually fallen for the lip-service delivered by the CEO and other senior colleagues at the orientation. Top personnel cannot claim to be approachable unless they are able to put into practice. If there is a gap between what they do and say in this respect could actually lead to losing people in the bargain, tarnishing company’s image beyond repair. What attracts others to the company is word of mouth, so it is important to use these tools of accessibility channels to effectively nurture a culture of openness in the organization..

Manager’s large part of success depends upon those working in his team.. It is very important to maintain a good and positive relationship with them. One of the most important things to strive for as a manager is to remain open and approachable. Many senior managers maintain an intimidating air of ‘get out of my way’ that often leads to employee resentment. Problems that could have been nipped in the bud bloom into larger disasters. A CEO said that he has built up informal one-on-one meeting with each manager and his / her team. This way, all sorts of issues get addressed before they reach any serious level.

The Seniors must make sure there are no repercussions when employees provide open and honest feedback and maintain confidence. They should seek out ideas and concerns and do not wait for employees to approach them.

If the issue is related to their immediate boss who is the cause of the problem or lacks authority to resolve the problem then open door policy allow employees to take their grievances to different levels within the organization.

It is often argued that if managers invest time in solving personal problems of their team members, they are wasting valuable time. The concept of boss being the counselor is not ingrained among Indian bosses. But when one has to spend more than three-fourths of waking hours at work, personal problems are often related to work. In today’s work environment, the gap between work and personal life is fast diminishing.

Managers are happy to hear their assistants but do absolutely nothing about their problem. Something like this literally defeats the purpose of being approachable. An open culture is a essential and managers must be measured on how well they do on this trait.

Seniors acting as counselors will immensely help employees perform better. Today’s leaders are expected to play a dual role of managing their people in both a professional and a personal capacity.

Labels: HRM

posted by Paresh @ 11:32 AM